Yggdrasil
Hacker ApprovedMesh networking software in Networking & smart home
Recommended as a stable, self-organising IPv6 mesh that runs quietly in the background and works as a Tailscale alternative. Critics note it is not built for anonymity or censorship resistance.
Recommended as a stable, self-organising IPv6 mesh that runs quietly in the background and works as a Tailscale alternative. Critics note it is not built for anonymity or censorship resistance.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 71%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 2.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Stable, runs quietly in background
“I've been using it as a Tailscale replacement for a few weeks, including hosting game servers, with about equivalent latency, and it seemed pretty stable.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack” “It simply runs in the background and does its job so reliably that I simply forget about it for long periods of time.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack” “Yggdrasil is easier to have always running in the background so I don't have to toggle it on just to access AA.”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Anna's Archive Loses .Org Domain After Surprise Suspension” Works as Tailscale alternative
“I've been using it as a Tailscale replacement for a few weeks, including hosting game servers, with about equivalent latency, and it seemed pretty stable.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack” “It's been working well for me as a kind of poor-man's tailscale, connecting several VPS and several laptops.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Yggdrasil Network” “the public Yggdrasil network was much better than a mesh VPN like Tailscale”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack” Self-organising routing, no central authority
“It's high-performance, uses regular IPv6 TCP/UDP, and automatically forms one big, open network, where routes are available.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack” “I like the idea of a network with no central authority delegating addresses.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Yggdrasil Network” “I love the idea of a decentralized routing system.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Yggdrasil Network” - Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Reticulum, a secure and anonymous mesh networking stack”
Fast, low latency
“It makes no compromises on speed and latency, but it has no anonymity.”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Self-Hosting on the Dark Web” “I'm actually getting better speeds than WireGuard over my LAN”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “A P2P Vision for QUIC (2024)” “It is fast, resilient, and pure IPv6.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Iran's 120h internet shutdown,Phones back. How to stay resilient?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Not built for anonymity or censorship resistance
“It makes no compromises on speed and latency, but it has no anonymity.”
Comment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Self-Hosting on the Dark Web” “Yggdrasil was never designed to be censorship-resistant and can be blocked with trivial DPI.”
Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Iran's 120h internet shutdown,Phones back. How to stay resilient?” Needs tun/tap setup, more work
“Yggdrasil-go needs a tun/tap interface”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Why I love NixOS” “So it's more work to set up.”
Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Yggdrasil Network”
What people recommend instead
The same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reticulum network stack | 70 | 27 | 72% | 12 | — | Approved |
| YggdrasilThis page | 24 | 10 | 71% | 11 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 61 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I also have a preference for services that I can configure via text and control from the terminal.”
“It makes no compromises on speed and latency, but it has no anonymity.”
“could also easily be learnt with Slackware or Yggdrasil”
“We need to get encrypted mesh networking (Yggdrasil, CJDNS, FIPS etc) out there before it’s too late.”
“letting every citizen no matter where they are from to create their own sites and freely hosts them”
“No bitcoin, no bullshit, your own tunneled ipv6.”
“Removes the need to deal with nginx also.”
“There are some useful ideas from SoftEtherVPN, BitTorrent, Yggdrasil Network, and Tor you could borrow”
“So it's more work to set up.”
“The routing "just works", though connecting to a peer can take a few seconds, at first.”
“I love the idea of a decentralized routing system.”
“all my edge devices are peered with that machine so routing is fine”
“I like the idea of a network with no central authority delegating addresses.”
“I use it heavily to get static, publicly routable addresses for SSH purposes.”
“It's been working well for me as a kind of poor-man's tailscale, connecting several VPS and several laptops.”
“When we abandon prefix routing based on I-told-you-so and start using Yggdrasil”
“Yggdrasil-go needs a tun/tap interface”
“so that it's not tied down to IPv4v6 and DNS and all existing hardware infra”
“Use a decentralized compact routing scheme like Yggdrasil Network”
“Just look at Yggdrasil on how these people created meshnets running even under Android and cheap i386 netbooks.”
“you can have a reasonable regional network in that time”
“the public Yggdrasil network was much better than a mesh VPN like Tailscale”
“NNCP, Yggdrasil... every portable project uses sane choices.”
“It's high-performance, uses regular IPv6 TCP/UDP, and automatically forms one big, open network, where routes are available.”
“Yggdrasil already does a good job with routing”
“It simply runs in the background and does its job so reliably that I simply forget about it for long periods of time.”
“I've been using it as a Tailscale replacement for a few weeks, including hosting game servers, with about equivalent latency, and it seemed pretty stable.”
“it can run over PTP IP links, which is the only option in a full internet blackout”
“Yggdrasil was never designed to be censorship-resistant and can be blocked with trivial DPI.”
“It is fast, resilient, and pure IPv6.”
“Yggdrasil network is probably the future”
“I run Yggdrasil on that, and NNCP too among other tools.”
“it's a cool platform and it doesn't take much work to set up on their end”
“Yggdrasil is easier to have always running in the background so I don't have to toggle it on just to access AA.”
“I've used streaming without many issues”
“ygg is a solid option but it would overwhelm the network since AA has intense traffic”
“Turns out, chat + agent interface is much more productive than either alone.”
“This is beautiful and works for private networks, as well as for their global overlay IPv6 network.”
“Yggdrasil is fantastic, it goes back some original ideas of the Internet we have almost forgotten”
“I'm actually getting better speeds than WireGuard over my LAN”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.